The recent public awareness of energy shortages and of the finite quantity of energy availble in this country in the form of oil and the like, has increased the interest in solar heating devices. This invention relates to a solar heating device which can be installed on an existing home. Additionally, the invention relates to a solar heating device which can be installed upon a wall of an existing building or home, traditionally a south facing wall with the attendant advantage that it is not subjected to weather damage by hail or the like as would be a roof mounted collecting system. Additionally, another advantage of the system of this invention is that heat can be picked up at any level along the wall and delivered conveniently to adjacent rooms. Yet another important advantage of this invention is that the wall is comprised of a series of precast blocks which are made before hand and can be pre-assembled so that at the job site it is only necessary to form a tier of the blocks along the desired building wall. This substantially eliminates much of the work at a construction job site and much of the expense.
A still further important advantage of the system of this invention is that it is a hot air system, and does not depend upon a separate heat sink as is common with most hot air systems. Rather, the system of this invention is self-contained in that the solar collector and the heat sink are all part and parcel of the same package, namely, the solar heat collecting building blocks. Thus, the system is substantially maintenance free, because of the rugged nature of the building blocks, is subject to easy installation and in all probability involves lower cost than most available systems.